Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Wrapping presents

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FUNDRAISER

The pressure to volunteer increases yearly. Now we sit in bookstores during the holiday season to wrap presents, cutting precise squares of paper to wrap what seems like everything but books: board games, stuffed animals, high-quality wooden toys just like grandma used to bake. The paper is hand-colored. Our children scribbled with broken crayons all night, weeping in their pajamas as they begged to go to bed, it’s very artisanal, and to stick the paper to itself (never tape the present itself, that’s the rule) we use our sharp scissors to peel off strips of skin.